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The “Nerd King of Internet Cooking.”
That’s what the New York Times calls Kenji Lopez-Alt.
Crowned – even though his entry into food was a happy mistake.
His signature style comes from his scientific breakdown of recipes--
from his own kitchen in a houseboat on Lake Union.
He has a chemist’s method -- but he’s super accessible....
“hi everyone, it’s kenji. I’m making a grilled cheese.”
He shot one of his most popular videos from a GoPro strapped to his forehead -- showing how to make a great grilled cheese sandwich…
“so the American will actually help those other cheeses melt nicely”
964-thousand views and counting.
Part of his popularity comes from his obvious “joy of cooking.”
“We’re going to get some butter in the pan.”
But he’s not just a next gen Julia Child – he also has a good helping of Bill Nye, the Science Guy … maybe even a little J-P Patches.
Because he’s an *educator...
a little uncomfortable being called a ‘king of the internet’ –
but the nerd part, he’s always identified with.
Kenji you know, I was like, I was into science and I was into classical music, and those are nerdy things and, you know. So. Yeah, so like, my middle and high school experience was a lot of feeling real uncomfortable around people and, you know, having a couple of real close friends,//.
Monique Why didn’t that become the love that became your career.
Kenji my, my 11th grade junior science teacher said, well, like, it’s, you know, it’s you got into MIT like it’s it’s real hard to well, first of all, you’d be real dumb not to accept the admission from MIT. He’s like, but it’s it’s going to be it’s going to be easier to, to to do music on the side and study science than it is to study music and do science on the side. And I was like, okay, I guess that makes sense. And that that was basically it, which just turned out to largely be true.
Monique yours is the first story I’ve heard where you become this giant in the food world. And it started off with an architecture degree from MIT.
Kenji it was because I, you know, I was I was a biology major when I started college. And then a couple of years into that, I had been working in biology labs for the summer, like I was working biology labs in the summer in high school as well. And then I realized, I don’t love lab work. Yeah. And I don’t want to be doing this for the rest of my life. And so, yeah, so the summer after my sophomore year, I, I wanted to change majors. And I eventually ended up going to architecture, but I spent that summer kind of thinking about what I wanted to do. And so instead of working in the lab, I, I was looking for a job just to make money. And I was actually looking for a job as a server. But one of the restaurants I walked into said, well, we don’t have a position for server, but we have a prep cook who didn’t show up this morning. So if you want a job as a cook for the summer, you could have a job as a cook. So I was like, okay, you were.
Monique This was just a paycheck decision for you at this point.
Kenji Yeah, it was a $9 an hour paycheck. Yep.
Monique And so what did that look like?
Kenji You know, they they asked me, you know, if what they said was actually if you know how to hold a knife and you wanted the job for the summer as a cook, you can have it. I lied, and I told them I knew how to hold the knife. So, you know, I never really cook before in my life.
Like the first job I did was cutting, slicing oranges for the bar. And I remember one of the other prep cooks comes up and she’s you’re like, shows me how to properly hold the knife because, you know, I was holding it by the handle like this as opposed to gripping it by the blade the way you’re supposed to. And I was kind of mangling the oranges, so. Yeah, it was, it was, it was I was learning on the job, but. And kind of it was a kind of, you know, fake it til you make it situation.
AT THAT POINT “MAKING IT “ FOR HIM WAS JUST KEEPING THE JOB THROUGH THE SUMMER.
HE WAS AT MIT AFTER ALL.
HE DITCHED THE BIOLOGY LABS—
SWITCHED TO ARCHITECTURE BECAUSE IT FELT LIKE A GOOD BALANCE BETWEEN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING.
ANOTHER MISTAKE.
Kenji I went and worked at an architecture firm for six months. Wow. And got laid off when they they downsized by 50%. I got laid off and I was like, okay, I’ll go back to cooking. But it was it wasn’t for me.
Monique And did you know that before you were laid off, that architecture wasn’t for you?
Kenji Yeah. Yeah, I, I knew that even before I went back. And like, I did it mainly because my mom was like, you shouldn’t throw away your degree. You should like, you should at least give it a try. And so I was like, okay, fine, I’ll go. I’ll go give it a try. But it was it was a fun experience. But but definitely not for me. I mean, it felt similar to lab work where I was like, I’m going to just be, you know, building models are doing AutoCAD for the next 15 years before I actually get to do anything interesting. Yeah. And with cooking, it’s similar. You know, it’s like you have to do the grunt work for real long time before you get to actually do the creative work. But for me, the grunt work in cooking was more fun. You know, you could you can eat the results for eating mistakes. //////
Monique Forgive me if I’m treading into stereotypes here, but with. Especially with immigrant families. Yeah. You know, they they often are so focused on education.
Kenji Academics.
Monique Academics and clear paths of success.
Kenji Yes.
Monique So when you graduate with an architecture degree from MIT. That’s a path to success. And then you step into a restaurant. Like, how did your parents feel about how did your family feel about that?
Kenji My dad is from western Pennsylvania … my mom is a Japanese immigrant. She came here from Japan when she was a late teenager. And she. Yeah, she was not happy. She when I told her I was getting a job at a restaurant after graduating college, she said, like, well, you might as well go work in fast food because a cook is a cook.
Monique Oh, wow.
Kenji And and in a way, she’s right, you know, because because cooking actually, you know, cooking at a fancy restaurant versus cooking in fast food or any restaurant across the spectrum. It’s pretty similar. You have a set of operations and procedures. It’s all just like real high adrenaline, quick paced work. And you’re and you’re doing the same things over and over and over. The type of food you’re making is obviously different, sort of the level I think of the sort of finesse that you need is a little different. But but yeah, it’s all it’s all pretty similar work. But well, well yeah. She was she wasn’t happy and she and she wasn’t happy for many years I think it wasn’t until I got, I got a gig doing recipes for the New York Times And she could, like, show her friends, oh, this is my son. ///
She will be the first to tell you that I’ve always been, like, pretty hard headed, like, I’m going to I’m going to do what I want to do. Yeah. Kind of person. ////
Monique Was there any point along the line that, I mean, your success is obvious now, but was there any point along the line where you wondered if you made a mistake going into them.
Kenji You know, I never wondered if I made a mistake. I did wonder, like, okay, like, what’s the future going to bring? Like, am I, am I going to always be living in like a, a shared apartment where my, my bed touches three, three different walls because the room is so small. But you know, but for me, it’s like I ever since even like middle school, like I’ve kind of always known that, like, all right, I’m going to do my best work if I’m doing something I love doing. And so my, my philosophy has always been like, you know, find the thing I love doing, work hard at it. And and if I’m successful, great. And if I’m not, at least I’m still doing something I love doing
Monique Well, and it’s also like finding falling in love with the person and deciding that’s the person that you want to be with. Sometimes you make mistakes, like, did you ever think like, oh, I love this, but maybe this isn’t what I should be doing.
//
Kenji I did realize, you know, probably seven years or so into working in restaurants, like, okay, this is not this is not a thing that you can do forever. Like, I’ve seen so many chefs that burnout or chefs that end up later in life, you know, you know, regretting that they stayed in restaurants. And so I did think to myself, okay, like, if I’m going to stay in cooking, I need to find. An alternative career path and just and then just going in restaurants
I had questions that I kind of wanted to answer like, oh, like why? Why do we fry French? French fries twice? Why do we seer a steak before we put it in an oven. Why do we salt the chicken? This. Yeah. All these sort of cooking questions, culinary questions.
the answer to the question is you do it this way because the chef does it that way.
HE STARTED SEEKING HIS OWN ANSWERS AT COOK’S ILLUSTRATED, IN THE MAGAZINE’S TEST KITCHEN IN BOSTON.
THEN MOVED ONTO SERIOUS EATS IN NEW YORK--
A FOOD WEBSITE STARTED BY RENOWNED CRITIC ED LEVINE (LUH-VEEN).
AND REMEMBER HOW HE THOUGHT HE HATED LAB WORK?
LEVINE FIGURED OUT THAT WAS A BIT OF A MISTAKE TOO.
Kenji he said to me, like Kenji, like, well, you should start a column. What do you want to write about? And I was like, well, I’ve always been interested in food and science. And he’s like, okay, start a food science column. We can call it. He’s really good at coming up with names. He’s like, we’ll call it the food lab. You know, like if you write your first article and turn it in next week. Yeah. The first Food lab article I got paid $30 for, which was 20, which was $5 more than the going rate for online articles at the time.
THAT FIRST ARTICLE WAS ABOUT HOW TO BOIL A PERFECT EGG.
THREE THOUSAND WORDS—
NOT A RECIPE REALLY– BUT A SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION.
IT HATCHED HIS SIGNATURE STYLE.
the answer, by the way, is it the only thing it has to do with is the temperature of the water when you when you lower the eggs into them. So if the water is cold and you bring the eggs up to a boil, which some people recommend, the eggs will much more likely to fuze to the shell. Whereas if the water’s already boiling, or if you have a pot of steaming water and you lower the eggs into already hot water, they will peel much more easily. And I verified this like with a thousand eggs and 100 testers at some point say I’m positive that this is correct.
Monique And so the the basic goal of this podcast is to talk about mistakes and how essential they are to making progress of any kind. It seems especially relevant to what you do because you’re, you’re you’re tinkering and you’re testing and you’re learning from mistakes or errors along the way. Am I am I interpreting that?
Kenji Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, especially when I’m. When I’m developing a recipe. Yeah. Well. Well, a lot of the goal is to find out what mistakes have we’ve been making consistently in the kitchen. And what what can we do to fix those. Or you know, it’s a lot of it is sort of questioning accepted kitchen knowledge.
MAYBE YOU’RE LIKE ME – FAR FROM A CHEF.
THE FIRST RELATIVELY SUCCESSFUL MEAL I MADE WAS PASTA –
AFTER WAITING FOREVER FOR MY EIGHT QUART POT OF WATER TO BOIL SO I COULD COOK MY DRY SPAGHETTI.
BUT KENJI’S SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS WOULD’VE SAVED ME A LOT OF TIME.
Kenji what I found was that the pasta that you start in cold water and using a smaller volume of water actually ends up tasting better, especially when you’re using modern pasta, because the water ends up with a little bit more starch in it, so that when you, you know how when you when you finish cooking pasta, when you when you put the sauce in the pan with it, you’re supposed to take the pasta water, add some of the pasta water to the pan. The reason you do that is because the pasta water has some starch in it, and that helps sort of thicken up the sauce so that it coats the outside of the pasta better. And it clings to the pasta better. Okay. So when you when especially with modern pasta, if you start with a smaller volume of pasta, there’s more starch in the water so that when you then add that water to the sauce with the pan, it actually makes the pasta sauce cling to the pasta better than it would.
Monique So when you break down kind of these what had been taken as long standing truths and cooking, do you get pushback from people?
Kenji Oh yeah, for sure. You know, what you find is so my goal is not generally to to debunk, you know, my my goal is just like find what’s what’s true and what’s not okay. And oftentimes, you know, like 95% of the time you’ll find that like the way people have been cooking things is like there’s a reason why that’s the way they’ve been cooking things. But then every once in a while you find something like this where it’s like, okay, Like. This this actually is not true, you know?
THE FOOD LAB ALSO BECAME HIS INCUBATOR –
HE DEVELOPED HIS OWN PERSPECTIVE,
HIS OWN STYLE--
HIS OWN BOOK DEAL.
THE LEGENDARY COOKBOOK EDITOR AND PUBLISHER MARIA (GUARNASCHELLI) GORE-NISHELLY CAME CALLING.
Kenji at the time, my ex-wife and I, we were living in a one bedroom apartment in Brooklyn that had no windows. Which is illegal, but no windows. No windows. Yeah. No windows and no ventilation for the kitchen. So when I was doing my early food lab articles, there was head of a kitchen that had zero ventilation. And so like when I was testing, you know, hamburgers for a week, the the apartment would just smell like a fast food restaurant for a month.
And so I was on the phone with her being like, oh, wow, there’s Maria Guarnaschelli. And and she made an offer for my first book. I was like, that’s more money than I’ve ever like, more money than I ever imagined having in a in a bank account that once. Yeah. It’s like and now it’s like I look back and then it’s like, okay, like that would that would be enough to, to, to rent a, you know, like a three bedroom apartment with two other roommates in Seattle. But at the time, it felt like a huge sum because I was, you know, I was making 30 bucks an article, you know, doing freelance editing work, like as a freelancer,
Monique But that’s it. That’s a jump from taking that call and taking that deal to being on the New York Times bestseller list to have to selling a million of your like, what was that ride like?
Kenji [01:46:36] Yeah, it was, it was nuts. And so, you know, my my gamble was always like, are there other are there other people like me out there, like, who wish that they had had this when they were learning how to cook? I did not expect it to do anywhere near as well as it did. But you know, for me was I was like, this is going to work because I’m passionate about it and because I enjoy doing it. So as long as I make enough money to survive, yeah, it’s fine. You know, like, I’ll just keep doing this and, you know, so the the level of success that it found was a surprise, but. And a happy one. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t really the goal. You know, the goal was to just be able to do things I like.
.
GOAL OR NOT --
THE FOOD LAB WAS A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER-
A JAMES BEARD AWARD WINNER-
NAMED COOKBOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CULINARY PROFESSIONALS.
AN UNDENIABLE HIT.
AND THEN, HE MADE ANOTHER UNORTHODOX CHOICE.
Monique you come out with this cookbook that is huge, and then your follow up is a children’s book. Not many people do that decision. How did that happen?
Kenji Well, I had a child. And you know, I’ve always been really into children’s books, but I know I had a child and I wanted to. It was really I wanted to write something for her. And it was fun. You know, for me it was like it was another sort of learning experience because, you know, I had this impression that writing a kid’s book would be real easy compared to writing an adult book. But it’s not like it’s it’s you have to think just as hard about sort of the story and the structure and, and all that, like all the things that go into writing a good piece for an adult, like a good story arc, like a clear, a clear throughline and a message that you wonder, like all that applies to writing kids books also, but you have to do it in like, You know, a 10th of the words. Yeah.
AND SO HE COOKED UP ‘EVERY NIGHT IS PIZZA NIGHT’—
48 ILLUSTRATED PAGES - ABOUT A YOUNG GIRL EXPLORING HER NEIGHBORHOOD AND DISCOVERING ALL THE DELICIOUS FOODS AND CULTURES THAT SURROUND HER.
AFTER THAT, HE WENT BACK TO LONGER FORM—
THE 672-PAGE BOOK CALLED “THE WOK”, EXPLORING THE VERSATILITY OF THAT ONE PAN.
IT WON HIS SECOND JAMES BEARD AWARD.
BUT IN THE MIDDLE OF THAT, ANOTHER TURN.
“10 today we’re going to make some oven fried buffalo wings”
THIS ONE TO YOUTUBE.
HIS ENTHUSIASTIC AND DETAILED (BUT EASY TO FOLLOW) SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATIONS HAVE MADE HIS “KENJI’S COOKING SHOW” HUGELY POPULAR.
04 it’s got that real crispy skin, and that’s thanks to the baking powder
THEY’RE NOT PICTURE-PERFECT COOKING DEMONSTRATIONS—
THEY’RE *REAL*, FROM HIS HOME –
SOMETIMES WITH HIS DOG
((1529 Nats dog barking))
OR YOU CAN SPOT HIS DAUGHTER’S STUFFED UNICORN IN A HIGH CHAIR.
250-MILLION VIEWS… AND COUNTING
LONG LIVE THE NERD KING OF INTERNET COOKING.
((16 05 alright guys, gals, nonbinary pals, see you next time.))
Monique Your YouTube channel, hugely successful. was it the same approach as writing for the internet where you just said, I just want to put this out there and people will find me?
Kenji I had a lot of social anxiety and, and still do like I have trouble like getting in front of a big crowd and I do it nearly living. But it’s like it’s always made me real nervous. And so, so talking on camera with, with a camera like pointed at me was never really a natural thing. And so when I found like, oh, I can, I can put a GoPro camera on my head, I don’t really have to be okay. Right. And I can just talk while I’m cooking like that. That was a format that really worked for me. And after my first book came out, I had I had a little more experience of live cooking in front of, you know, I would do little cooking classes or cooking demos. And so I got kind of used to cooking and talking at the same time. And for some reason, you know, like talking in front of an audience. I got used to that faster than I got used to talking in front of a camera,
I think just from, from childhood, I was I was kind of a nerd. And so, you know, I’ve always had like kind of social anxiety since I was a kid. And yeah, you know, practicing talking in front of people gets me over. But no. But I’m still the kind of person where if I’m like, if I’m at an event and I don’t have a specific directive, you know, if I don’t like if like, it’s not like a place where I’m like, all right, these are the thing people I have to talk to. These are the things I have to do or I don’t have, like a wingman, like a friend. My natural inclination is to go stand in the corner and watch, you know, like, get out of there as fast as possible.
Monique Really? Still. Oh, yeah.
Kenji Yeah, yeah. Like. Oh, I’m. Yeah. No, I always feel awkward in big group settings.
HE IS MORE AT HOME – LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY—ONLINE.
THAT’S WHERE HE HAS REALLY CONNECTED WITH HIS AUDIENCE…
AND LEARNED TO OPEN UP.
BUT IT’S EXPOSED HIM IN WAYS HE DID NOT ANTICIPATE.
mml: when things are online and social media based sometimes the connection is deeper . but people also can be anonymously nasty or anonymously adoring. What has that been like for you to navigate?
That’s been a learning experience. that’s been a big learning experience. You know, when when you write for an online audience and when you want to connect, especially like in the age of social media, when people are looking for authenticity and, and like a real connection. And so you want to be able to sort of reveal as much of yourself as but like that’s that’s sort of the goal as far as like connecting with an audience, you want to be able to reveal yourself as much as possible and as be sort of as real as possible.
BUT HE TOOK IT BEYOND THE KITCHEN – AND INTO A DIFFERENT PRESSURE COOKER.
IN 2019 WHEN HE WAS A PART OWNER OF A RESTAURANT IN THE BAY AREA, HE TWEETED THAT NO ONE WOULD BE SERVED THERE WEARING A MAGA HAT OR ANY OTHER SYMBOL OF INTOLERANCE AND HATE.
A MISTAKE.
The 2016 elections. Like I was pretty vocal about all that. And and yeah, at some point, like, people in my restaurants started getting like, harassing phone calls, people would park outside the restaurant and stare at them and, you know.
Monique Really?
Kenji Yeah. Yeah, it was like it was.
Monique So what was the fallout from that?
Kenji Well, yeah, I mean, eventually it died down. But but yeah, there, there there are people in in MAGA hats, like, you know, four people parked in the cars, sitting out, parked outside the restaurant, staring in. We had phone calls threatening to call ice. And, you know, things, things like that.
but but that was sort of like a, you know, a wake up call for me as far as, like, realizing like, okay, like my, my influences influence has spread beyond just myself and sort of my own personal sphere. Like it’s now sort of extended to my professional sphere a little bit.
Kenji I realized after a while that that yeah, these online forums, things like Twitter or X, whatever can be a lot of it. You know, they’re designed to trigger you, you know, like they’re they’re designed to pit people against each other and to just get the short of the quickest, shortest possible reaction with the and the most surface level.
Monique No dialog, no shouting. Yeah.
Kenji Yeah, exactly.
Part is the is the is the lesson that I’ve learned, which is, yeah, there are certain things where you’re wasting your energy and you really need to focus in on what what is effective, what’s going to. Well, first of all, what’s going to affect your immediate sphere the best? What’s going to give you sort of peace in your life, and then also what’s going to be most effective as far as achieving your your ultimate end goals.
NO COINCIDENCE—
THAT SOUNDS LIKE A BOILED DOWN SERENITY PRAYER—
ASKING FOR THE ABILITY TO ACCEPT THE THINGS THAT CANNOT BE CHANGED, THE COURAGE TO CHANGE WHAT CAN—
AND THE WISDOM TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE.
THE MANTRA FOR MANY WHO TRY TO GIVE UP ALCOHOL.
Kenji It took a few tries. And yeah, it’s it’s it’s especially at the beginning. It was real real difficult. Yeah. I think any any alcoholic will tell you it’s difficult.
Monique You do think you were an alcoholic?
Kenji Oh, yeah. Yeah. No doubt like that. Yeah. I have a I have an addictive personality and. Yeah, for sure, like, you know, if I, if, if the alcohol is come in all different flavors and so, you know, some will get real drunk and start fights or do stupid stuff and some, some like me will just drink daily and have a real difficult time cutting back on that. And I honestly, I think like that that latter kind is the more insidious kind because there’s no like there’s nobody out there telling you, hey, like you have a problem. You know, it’s something you have to decide for yourself. And many people get through life just fine. It’s like I was fully functional. I had, you know, I like I had I took care of my kids. I have a real good job. You know, I have a good career. Like all that stuff, like all those things that you might measure yourself by. I didn’t really have a problem with, but you kind of have to decide for yourself, like, hey, this is this feels unmanageable to me, and it feels like a change I want to make.
Monique besides not drinking anymore? Do you feel like your personality or anything about you has changed without that?
Kenji Well, my health has certainly changed. No, my personality has changed also. You know, I think any, any alcoholic will tell you that when you when you’re an alcoholic, you’re a liar. You know, whether it’s lying to yourself or to the people who who care about you or to strangers like. And so that that, I mean, that’s a big, big lift off my shoulders. So to be able to say, hey, yeah, like I drank every day, I, I am an alcoholic
NOW HE HAS A DIFFERENT DAILY HABIT
((nats))
HE’S RECONNECTING WITH HIS OTHER PASSION – MUSIC.
PLAYING VIOLIN WITH HIS DAUGHTER EVERY DAY,
AND ORCHESTRATING PERFORMANCES COMBINING CLASSICAL MUSIC WITH FOOD.
((nats ))
HE ALSO DOES FOOD REVIEWS ON INSTAGRAM– WHICH CAN BE A WINDFALL TO LOCAL RESTAURANTS—
((nats))
AND, YES, HE’S WORKING ON ANOTHER COOKBOOK.
BUT FOR NOW, WE’LL END WITH A RECIPE … FOR DISASTER.
Monique what’s your favorite mistake?
Kenji My favorite mistake. It’s the one that has the funniest story. I think this is there’s not really much of a moral to it. It’s just the one that I get a funny story, I. But it was when I was a line cook, one of my first restaurant jobs. And this is what my, my, my older sister, she calls type two fun, which is something that wasn’t fun when it happened, but it’s fun in retrospect.
Monique Makes a good story.
Kenji That’s what I always. Yeah, exactly. I was I was on the pasta station and there’s this day when. So I was making gnocchi on the menu there. And the goal with gnocchi is always to use as little flour as possible, you know? So you take a potato, you rice it, you add eggs and flour and then you roll it into a little balls. The more flour you use, the denser and sort of gummy they become. So the goal is to use as little flour as possible. And so there’s one day I was making gnocchi and I was like real proud of how little flour I use. But then over the course of service, I was realizing that gnocchi were kind of dissolving in the pasta water, and so they weren’t holding together. I should have used more flour. And but by the time I realized it’s like there is a whole bunch of, like, dissolved gnocchi that had clogged up the pasta machine. And so the machine was this machine that circulates the water and filters the water, and then it’s consistently boiling. But the the pump got stuck. And so the pasta, it wasn’t circulating properly because it was clogged with gnocchi. And so, you know, you’re taught as a line cook to really think on your feet and try and solve your own problems. So my first thought was like, okay, like, here’s a clogged pipe. What do you do when there’s a clogged pipe? Oh, you use a plunger. And so, like, I immediately, like, went to the bathroom, grabbed the plunger, stuck. You know, you did it, stuck it into the pasta machine, and, like, bare, like getting the pasta out of this pipe. And my chef, like, stares at me and he sees, like, he’s like, he looks at me and I’m like. And I turn around, like, real happy. Like, look, look what I’ve done. Like, if I fix it. And he’s just, like, staring at me in horror and then like. And that’s when I realized, oh, like, what did I just do? And I, and I really messed up the rest of the story because I obviously like at that point I had to empty the pasta machine, take every piece apart, sterilize it all. And meanwhile, like all the other cooks are trying to cook pasta with like, pots of water boiling on the stove. And yeah, so that that was.
Monique An MIT education at work right there.
Kenji [Yeah, yeah, it was the MIT. It was like trying to solve a problem without thinking about the bigger picture, like solve the immediately immediate problem at hand. The best way you know how. But you know, kind of losing the losing the forest for the trees there.
AND THERE YOU GO –
YOUR SECOND PASTA RECIPE FROM THE GREAT KENJI LOPEZ-ALT. WE’LL LEAVE IT UP TO YOU TO DECIDE WHICH ONE TO FOLLOW.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Was it a Hit or Miss? I would love to hear what you think.
You can find me, Monique Ming Laven on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. All the links are on kiro7.com/HitandMiss.
Photography and editing – by Jeff Ritter.
Art Direction from Ryan Barber –
Invaluable feedback from Julie Berg, Kyla Grace, and James Sido.
I hope you’ll continue the ride with me. Please follow this podcast for all the episodes, dropping on Wednesdays.
------------------------------
NEXT TIME ON HIT AND MISS
THE CAREER OF A HISTORY-MAKING ASTRONAUT—
NOT ALWAYS A SMOOTH RIDE
[01:41:29] Dottie: like a rear ending or like a football team tackling. But from behind.
DOTTIE METCALF-LINDENBERGER TALKS ABOUT WHAT IT’S LIKE TO ANSWER A CELESTIAL CALLING—
IN THE MIDDLE OF SOBERING CIRCUMSTANCES
Monique And death helped you realize what your life was supposed to be.
Dottie Exactly.
AND WHY HER DREAMS WERE ONLY POSSIBLE BECAUSE SHE WAS ONCE STUMPED BY A TEENAGER.
And so yeah, that question changed my life, right. LAUGHS About how do you go to the bathroom in space? Yes.
THAT’S ON THE NEXT HIT AND MISS.
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